“IAF pilot was set free fearing India attack”
Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s “legs were shaking” when he told a meeting last year that India would attack if Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman, shot down in a dogfight, was not returned, a Pakistani opposition lawmaker has said.
Former speaker Ayaz Sadiq, a senior leader of the main opposition Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) who was at one time close to Prime Minister Imran Khan, made the revelation while speaking in the National Assembly or lower house of Pakistan’s parliament on Wednesday.
Sadiq was responding to accusations by a member of the ruling Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) party that the former PML-N government had not properly handled national security issues, such as the case of former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was detained by Pakistani authorshot
ities in 2016 on charges of espionage. “In the case of Abhinandan, I remember Shah Mahmood Qureshi was in that meeting which the prime minister refused to attend and the chief of army staff joined us – his [Qureshi’s] legs were shaking and there was sweat on his brow,” Sadiq said, speaking in Urdu.
“And Shah Mahmood Qureshi told us, ‘For God’s sake let this man [Abhinandan] go back because at 9pm on that night, India will carry out an attack on Pakistan’,” he said, talking of a meeting of government officials with parliamentary leaders held sometime after Abhinandan was on February 27, 2019 amid an India-Pakistan standoff.
“But India wasn’t going to attack, nothing was going to happen. But they were going to kneel down and send back Abhinandan, and they did it,” Sadiq said, adding that the ruling PTI shouldn’t level such allegations as this would force the opposition to disclose “such things”.
The remarks sparked a strong political reaction in India, with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president JP Nadda highlighting the fear of an Indian retaliation weighing heavy on the Pakistan government, and blaming Congress president Rahul Gandhi for allegedly questioning the Indian military.Sadiq did not offer more details during his brief speech in the National Assembly but subsequently told Dunya News channel that the Opposition would be forced to respond if those in power referred to it as “Modi ka yaar” (friend of PM Narendra Modi).
He told the channel that Qureshi
made the remarks at a meeting where parliamentary leaders, including those of PML-N and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), were present. Sadiq also said the opposition had supported the PTI government on all issues, including Kashmir and Abhinandan, but it would no longer be appropriate to provide further support.
As Sadiq’s remarks were played up in India, he issued a video statement in which he claimed the Indian media “distorted my statement and played with the words in an attempt to change it”. He suggested he had meant that Prime Minister Khan’s “legs were shaking and he was perspiring as he couldn’t face the opposition”.
He said, “What was their thinking, which country they were taking dictation from, were they directly in contact with Modi, was there any other pressure on them – they didn’t think it fit to share with us and they came and said that we have to immediately release Abhinandan.”